


Fire With Angels Shared

by withdiamonds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-05
Updated: 2008-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 08:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withdiamonds/pseuds/withdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the trip to Lawrence, Dean tells Sam something he hasn't before.  Spoilers for <i>Home.</i>  Title courtesy Lord Byron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire With Angels Shared

“So how come you don’t remember Missouri?” Sam smirks at his brother. “She sure remembers you.”

“Hey, I was _not_ a goofy lookin’ kid, dude,” Dean says with righteous indignation. “I was _adorable_. I still am.” Sam snorts. Dean ignores him and shrugs. “I don’t know. I told you I don’t remember much from back then.”

“Apparently _you_ were hard to forget,” Sam says dryly.

Dean yanks open the driver’s side door of the Impala. “If you’re gonna make me sit in the damn car all night, the least you can do is shut the fuck up.”

“Did she ever hit you with a spoon? You’d remember that, right?” Sam is enjoying himself way too much. Dean scowls at the steering wheel.

“How come you always get off on seeing me in trouble, huh?” Dean swings the Impala onto the highway, tires squealing.

“Are you kidding me? You’re kidding me, right?” Sam settles back in his seat, apparently ready to enjoy more than the ride.

But Dean’s not really in the mood. The poltergeist is gone and he can’t come up with one good reason to stay in Lawrence for one more minute. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in Sam’s freaky psychic dream thing, it was just that – well, he doesn’t really _want_ to believe in it. Seriously, what the fuck? Sam hits him with that crap out of the blue and Dean’s supposed to just nod his head and go along with whatever crazy-ass thing Sam wants to do?

Sam seems to get a clue as to his brother’s mood and mercifully shuts up as Dean inches the Impala quietly along Jenny’s block and parks across the street from her house. No one can say his brother is slow to catch on.

“The problem is, I could be sleeping in a real bed right now,” Dean grumbles as he settles down into the Impala’s seat, tipping his head back. He keeps his eyes closed against Sam’s frown. He wants to be crabby and Sam’s lame attempts at humor and conversation aren’t about to stop him.

He hates being here with every fiber of his being. Seeing the house again bothered him way more than he let on to Sammy. He could feel his mother there, see her around every corner, and it didn’t matter that the walls have been painted a different color or that the furniture belongs to a complete stranger.

Dean’s actually almost on the verge of dozing off when his stupid brother elbows him gently in the ribs.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“I know you want to get out of town, dude. And we will. I just feel like there’s still something there, you know?” Sam says earnestly.

“No, I don’t know. Not really.”

Sam’s quiet again for a while, but Dean knows better than to think it’ll last. He can feel it in the air, Sam wants to ask questions. It’s what his brother does best.

“Did we ever come back here, to this house, after it was fixed up? Where did we stay after the fire? How long were we here before we left Lawrence?”

Jesus Christ. A _lot_ of questions.

“How the hell should I know, Sam? I was just a kid.” Dean keeps his eyes closed, his head resting on the back of the seat.

“But that guy at the garage made it sound like we were here a while. Like Dad kept working there, even after he talked to Missouri. Where did we live, Dean?”

“You’re not gonna shut up about this, are you?” Dean sits up and turns to glare at Sam, who just looks at him, forehead all wrinkled, eyes all curious. “Shit. Okay, we stayed with some friend of Mom’s. I forget her name.”

“Was she nice?” What the hell kind of question is that?

“Was she nice? I don’t know, she was okay, I guess. There was a lot of yelling, that I do remember,” Dean says dryly. “It was Dad, after all.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Sam huffs out a small laugh. “Tell me about it.”

*

Daddy and his friend from the garage were yelling again. Dean used to think the man was nice, but he didn’t think so anymore. Sometimes Daddy took Dean to work with him to look at the cars and Charlie was always nice to him. Once in a while he came to their house – before the fire took Mommy away – to eat supper, and he always made Mommy laugh. Dean had liked it when she laughed.

But now the man was making Daddy yell and Dean didn’t like it when Daddy yelled. It was scary and it made his stomach hurt. He pulled further into the shadows in the hallway outside the kitchen.

Dean tried to be really quiet all the time, so maybe Daddy wouldn’t yell so much. Dean didn’t want to talk anyway. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“John, be reasonable,” Charlie said.

“Fuck you,” Daddy shouted. Dean knew that was a bad word, one only grownups were allowed to say. Dean had tried it out once when he was playing in the backyard by himself. He liked it, like the way it felt in the back of his throat, hard and sharp.

“I know there was something, something evil that killed her and I’m not going to stop looking until I find out what it was.” Daddy sounded like he was growling.

“John, it was an accident. The police said so, the fire investigators said so, everyone says so. This is all just -” there was a pause and Dean waited for Daddy to yell again. “Crazy talk, that’s all it is.”

Charlie didn’t come over any more after that and then Daddy stopped going to work. He was still gone a lot, though, and that made the lady they were staying with mad. She and Daddy yelled at each other a lot, too.

“I don’t mind watching the boys if you’re at work, John,” she said, “But I have my own life to live if you’re going to spend all your time on some wild goose chase.”

Dean frowned. Why would Daddy chase a goose? And if he was, wouldn’t he smile more? Dean thought it sounded like fun.

“I have to leave the boys here. I have nowhere else to leave them. Just until I find out what killed Mary. It’s not safe to take them with me. Just give me more time.” Daddy’s voice sounded just like it did when he was trying to get Dean to talk to him, sad and stern at the same time.

“Nothing killed Mary, John,” the lady yelled. “It was an accident.”

Dean hated all the yelling. “Shhh,” he whispered to Sammy, who was beginning to stir restlessly in his crib. “It’s okay, Sammy.” Daddy didn’t know it, but sometimes Dean did talk. He talked to Sammy. Whispered, mostly. That way Daddy wouldn’t hear him and maybe start yelling at him.

Dean heard the front door slam and the deep roar of Daddy’s car. The lady who used to be Mommy’s friend made loud banging noises in the kitchen for a while and then she called Dean to come eat lunch.

He sat at her kitchen table and stared at his bowl of tomato soup. She didn’t make it right, not like Mommy made it. Mommy crumbled up crackers for Dean to float on the top of his soup, and she made grilled cheese sandwiches to go with it.

There were no sandwiches. Dean’s feet didn’t reach the floor and he swung his feet and listened to his heels hit the legs of the chair and thought about drinking his milk.

“Dean, stop kicking the chair,” the lady said sharply. Dean’s eyes stung, but then he blinked hard. He wasn’t going to cry, he was a big boy.

The lady turned back to the stove where she was heating up a bottle for Sammy to drink. She was muttering about being too busy for little boys and saying things like _crazy son of a bitch_ and _just an accident_.

Dean wondered if she’d let him feed Sammy. Sometimes Daddy did, but the lady seemed to think Dean couldn’t do it right, or something, and she never let him. That was stupid. Dean could feed Sammy just fine.

He almost asked, almost allowed the words to come out, soft and pleading, but her eyes looked tired and her mouth looked mad, so he didn’t.

That night in bed, after Daddy helped Dean tuck Sammy into his crib, and after he pushed Dean’s hair out of his eyes and kissed him on the forehead and said, “Goodnight, dude,” Dean made a plan.

If Daddy was going to leave them here until he found what killed Mommy, that meant if he found what killed her, they could all go away together, just him and Sammy and Daddy. They wouldn’t have to stay here anymore.

And Dean knew what had killed his mommy. He would find it again and then the three of them could be together and maybe Daddy would stop yelling and being so mad all the time.

In the morning when Dean woke up, John was already gone. After breakfast, when Mommy’s friend was busy giving Sammy a bath, Dean snuck into the kitchen to look for the things he needed. He wasn’t exactly sure how to do this, but if he found the thing that killed Mommy, he was gonna have to talk to it, because he wanted to ask it why.

Dean hadn’t talked for a while, so he practiced on Sammy that afternoon when they were supposed to be watching TV in the living room. Mommy’s friend was making dinner.

“Can I trust you to keep an eye on Sammy, Dean,” she asked, looking at him doubtfully from the kitchen doorway.

Dean knew he wasn’t supposed to roll his eyes at grownups, but he did it really fast so she wouldn’t see. He nodded solemnly. What did she think he did all the time, besides watch out for Sammy and make sure the thing that killed Mommy didn’t come back?

Sammy lay on his back on a blanket on the floor and Dean sat next to him, talking to him in a soft voice and telling him all about his plan to find the thing that killed Mommy so that Daddy wouldn’t go away and leave them anymore.

After dinner, as the sun sank behind the neighbor’s trees, Dean slipped unnoticed into the back yard. He found a good spot over by the fence where the grass didn’t grow a lot and pulled the lighter out of his pocket.

Dean almost didn’t hear his father’s voice, hoarse with fear, ringing out over the yard. He stared at the fire, willing it to tell him why it had done what it did. The flames crackled and popped in the warm evening air, waves of heat on his face, but he couldn’t make out the words it was speaking to him.

He felt his father’s hands under his arms, scooping him up and holding him to his chest, almost crushing him. Daddy was saying his name over and over again, “Dean, Dean, oh my god, Dean,” and Dean leaned in and whispered in his ear, “I found it, Daddy. I found the thing that killed Mommy. Don’t leave me and Sammy anymore, ‘k?” and he tucked his face into his father’s neck and felt his father tremble.

*

“Wait, you set the backyard on fire?”

“Not the whole backyard, you moron.” Dean doesn’t look over at his brother. He doesn’t remember much from that time, a lot of it’s a blur, but he remembers the fire he set and the fear in his father’s voice and he’s not sure he wants to see the expression on Sam’s face right now.

“And you thought – I mean, -” Sam stops, like he doesn’t even know what to ask. “What were you thinking?” he asks, like he really wants to know.

“I was four, Sammy. Shut up,” Dean growls.

“What did Dad do?”

Dean shrugs. “We left Lawrence right after that. And he took us with him.” He shrugs again. “He didn’t leave us there.”

“Huh.” Sam doesn’t seem to have much more to say, thank God. Dean leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t tell Sam that sometimes, when they’ve salted and burned something, a pile of bones that used to be a person once upon a time, sometimes Dean watches the flames and listens to the crackles and pops to see if he can make out whatever words are in there, whatever the fire is trying to tell him.

It’s stupid and he knows better, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it.


End file.
